With the rise of blogs, forums, online magazines, e-commerce, and corporate websites, many organizations are turning to Content Management Systems (CMS), such as Joomla or SharePoint, to create rich websites. CMSs simplify website delivery - but they also expose your organization to a new set of vulnerabilities.This presentation shows how malicious hackers exploit vulnerabilities found in popular Content Management Systems to systematically identify and attack unsuspecting organizations.

1. © 2013 Imperva, Inc. All rights reserved.
CMS Hacking 101
Analyzing the Risk with 3rd Party Applications
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Barry Shteiman
Senior Security Strategist

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Agenda
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§ CMS defined
§ Risks and trends
§ Recent incidents
§ Into the details
• An attack campaign
• Industrialized attack campaign
§ Reclaiming security

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Today’s Speaker - Barry Shteiman
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§ Senior Security Strategist
§ Security consultant working
with the CTO office
§ Author of several application
security tools
§ Open source security projects
code contributor
§ Twitter @bshteiman

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CMS Defined
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Content Management System

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What is a CMS?
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A content management system (CMS) is a computer program
that allows publishing, editing and modifying content as well as
maintenance from a central interface.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_management_system

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Deployment Distribution
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Source: http://trends.builtwith.com/cms

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Enterprise Adoption
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Risks and Trends
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OWASP Top 10 – 2013 Update
New, A9 - Using Known Vulnerable Components
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3rd Party
According to Veracode:
• “Up to 70% of internally developed code originates outside of the
development team”
• 28% of assessed applications are identified as created by a 3rd
party
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When a 3rd Party Brings its Friends
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§ More than 20% of the 50 most popular WordPress plugins are
vulnerable to web attacks
§ 7 out of top 10 most popular e-commerce plugins are vulnerable to
common Web attacks
-- Checkmarx Ltd. research lab “The Security State of WordPress’ Top 50 Plugins” white paper, June 18, 2013
You can’t fix code you don’t own, even if you
host your own, that code has third party
components in it.

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Attack Surface
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Source: https://www.bsi.bund.de/DE/Publikationen/Studien/CMS/Studie_CMS.html
BSI is Germany's federal office for information security
In a research conducted by BSI in Germany, ~20% of the
vulnerabilities discovered were found in the CMS core, ~80%
in plugins and extensions.

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Classic Web Site Hacking
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Hacking
1. Identify Target
2. Find Vulnerability
3. Exploit
Single Site Attack

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Classic Web Site Hacking
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Hacking
1. Identify Target
2. Find Vulnerability
3. Exploit
Hacking
1. Identify Target
2. Find Vulnerability
3. Exploit
Hacking
1. Identify Target
2. Find Vulnerability
3. Exploit
Hacking
1. Identify Target
2. Find Vulnerability
3. Exploit
Hacking
1. Identify Target
2. Find Vulnerability
3. Exploit
Multiple Site Attacks

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CMS Hacking
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Hacking
1. Identify CMS
2. Find Vulnerability
3. Exploit
CMS Targeting Attack

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Recent Incidents
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3rd Party Code Driven Incidents
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Breached via 3rd party application on Drupal.org own servers.

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3rd Party Code Driven Incidents
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3rd party service provider hacked, customer data affected.

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3rd Party Code Driven Incidents
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Yahoo’s 3rd party hack as detailed in Imperva’s January HII report.
HII Report: http://www.imperva.com/docs/HII_Lessons_Learned_From_the_Yahoo_Hack.pdf

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CMS Related Incidents
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Into the Details
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How a CMS Attack Campaign Might Look

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The Attacker’s Focus
Server Takeover
Direct Data Theft
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CMS Mass Hacking
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Source: www.exploit-db.com
Step 1: Find a vulnerability in a CMS platform
Even public vulnerability databases, contain thousands
of CMS related vulnerabilities.

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CMS Gone Wild(card)
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Step 2: Identify a fingerprint in a relevant CMS-based site
A fingerprint can be
• Image
• URL
• Tag
• Object Reference
• Response to a query
• etc..

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Fingerprinted
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Tag based
The code will usually contain fingerprints (unless obfuscated) of
the CMS in use.

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Fingerprinted
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URL based
An administrator interface may be front facing, allowing detection
and login attempts

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Google Dork for the Masses
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§ Query: inurl:(wp-config.conf | wp-config.txt) ext:(conf | txt | config)
§ Results: 144,000

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Google Dork for the Masses
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In our case: Database Host, User and Password Exposed

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Botnets Targeting Your CMS
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Recently Observed:
• Botnets Scan websites for
vulnerabilities
• Inject Hijack/Drive-by code to
vulnerable systems
• Onboarding hijacked
systems into the Botnet

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From a Botnet Communication
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Botnet operator uses zombies to
scan sites for vulnerabilities
* As observed by Imperva’s ADC Research Team
Google Dork

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From a Botnet Communication
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Botnet exploits vulnerabilities and
absorbs victim servers
* As observed by Imperva’s ADC Research Team

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Reclaiming Security
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Securing 3rd Party Applications

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Analyzing the Attack Surface
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Graphics Source: https://www.bsi.bund.de/DE/Publikationen/Studien/CMS/Studie_CMS.html
BSI is Germany's federal office for information security
Certain vulnerabilities in 3rd party applications, can only be properly fixed
using Web Application Firewalls.

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Deployment Matters
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Cloud based deploymentOn premise deployment
Applications and 3rd party code
deployed in your virtual/physical
data center.
Hosted applications and B2B
services.
Imperva Incapsula
Cloud

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When a company builds its security model it usually does
not take into account elements that are not in control,
which creates the security hole.
Companies should:
§ Implement policies both on the legal and technical
aspects to control data access and data usage.
§ Require third party applications to accept your security
policies and put proper controls in place
§ Monitor.
Recommendations
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§ Assume third-party code – coming from partners,
vendors, or mergers and acquisitions – contains
serious vulnerabilities
§ Pen test before deployment to identify these issues
§ Deploy the application behind a WAF to
• Virtually patch pen test findings
• Mitigate new risks (unknown on the pen test time)
• Mitigate issues the pen tester missed
• Use cloud WAF for remotely hosted applications
§ Virtually patch newly discovered CVEs
• Requires a robust security update service
Technical Recommendations
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Discussions
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Questions
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Presentation Materials
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